470 J. S. Gardner — Revision of the British Eocenes. 



The Lower Bai2;shot Beds are exceedingly well developed along the 

 borders of Dorset and Hants, and include the pipe-clays of commerce 

 found there. They are very distinct at Alum Bay, but are difficult 

 to identify even at Whitecliflf Bay, and over the London Basin 

 they are unfortunately correlated with the marine sands, etc., clearly 

 produced by the retiring London Clay Sea. They possess no fauna 

 worth mentioning, but the flora met with in the purely fluviatile 

 deposits of the west is quite peculiar to them. Only a few pieces of 

 Palms and a very few Dicotyledons have been preserved from the 

 once rich deposits near Corfe Castle. Studland still yields macerated 

 Palms and Ferns, and a few Dicotyledons, but the distinctive flora 

 has chiefly been obtained from Alum Bay, a locality now almost 

 barren. Large Figs, an Aralia, and apparently Proteaceous leaves 

 characterize it, and give it an Australian aspect, completely different 

 to that of any other Eocene flora, only so far met with elsewhere in 

 the Gres du Soissonnais. It is so unlike the Middle Bagshot flora 

 of Bournemouth, that it cannot consistently be placed in the same 

 division of the Eocene, whilst its union with the London Clay would 

 raise that group to the value of the other Eocene groups, which 

 would then each comprise a marine, an estuarine, and a freshwater 

 series, to some extent probably parallel and contemporaneous with 

 each other. 



The Upper Eocenes. — These would, under the suggested classifica- 

 tion, comprise the Middle Bagshot series, ponsisting of the fresh- 

 water Bournemouth formation, the estuarine, and littoral Boscombe 

 Series, and the marine Bracklesham Series. The Bournemouth Series 

 occupies the western margin of the Hampshire Basin in Hampshire, 

 reposing on the Lower Bagshots, with an outlier at Bovey Tracey. 

 The flora is very rich and varied ; apparently somewhat American 

 in character, and very different to the flora preceding it. Its species 

 amount to many hundred. The Boscombe Beds are littoral, and pass 

 gradually into the purely marine Bracklesham. The Bracklesham 

 Beds are not recognized west of Highcliff, and extend eastward to 

 the vicinity of Woking and Chertsey. They are, with the exception 

 of the lowest beds of the Barton Series, the only strata in England 

 containing Nummulites, and it is specially remarkable that the sea 

 which deposited them swarmed with tropical Mollusca, such as large 

 Cowries, Cones, Volutes, Cerithia, Bulla, Cardita, etc., though the 

 contempoi-arjf land fauna and flora was certainly not more tropical 

 than that of the London Clay and Lower Bagshot. 



If the Oligocene formation were required to be sej)arated from the 

 Eocene in England by a natural break, the division would best be 

 placed here, for the marine fauna undergoes a great change in pass- 

 ing to the Barton Beds. A proportion of the commoner and smaller 

 species of mollusca remain, it is true; but all the magnificent tropical 

 forms disappear, and are replaced by others recalling those of the 

 London Clay, but with the addition of a few fine forms, such as Fusns 

 longcevus, Bostellaria ampla, and Valuta luctatrix. The Barton 

 Series merges into the Upper Bagshots, and these into the Headon 

 Series. The Crocodiles, Gavials, Turtles and Feather Palms of 



